All posts

The project formerly known as Project 365

For a few years, I'd been interested in doing a project 365—to push myself to take a picture every day for a year. Towards the end of 2010, my friend and fellow photographer, Nakeva, and I began talking about making it happen. We started out with a Posterous site for a few of us to post to. Having company helped keep me motivated and inspired—for a while.

I eventually stopped posting to Posterous and just posted to Flickr. And then I missed a day. "That's alright," I thought. "I'll just have to make up that one day by extending it a little." The days that I would almost forget about taking a photo and force myself to find something, anything to snap a picture of with my phone increased.

I started to debate whether or not to continue this endeavor. One day I tweeted about my deliberations and my friend Penney brilliantly, simply responded:

Looks like I didn't even make it to 182, but the point was that I was no longer feeling the project. I was doing it out of a sense of obligation, not motivation.

Part of what drew me to the idea of a project 365 in the first place was the motivation to take a picture every day. However, some days, I just forget or don't really feel it. And I hate doing something, particularly photography, that I am not actually feeling. It's not organic, inspired. I'm not saying I won't do it, or that we don't sometimes need to do things we don't want to. I am saying that for me, I want my own photography projects to be real, inspired. Not forced.

So I am freeing myself from the guilt and redefining this project as project 162. It was a good experience and helped push me to get some good shots.

Now I think I'm ready for project photograph like you mean it. Where I am not married to a specific formula or number of shots I need, but instead I collect photographs that I shoot because I want to shoot them. Ones that really mean something to me.